LIPA is pleased to announce Preserving America’s Legal Materials in Print (PALMPrint), an exciting collaborative pilot project aimed at developing a shared, circulating collection of primary U.S. legal materials in print. Working with NELLCO, the two organizations jointly have committed to underwrite $120,000.00 of the total cost of the three-year project. The remaining costs will be shared by the participating libraries. LIPA and NELLCO hope to secure commitments from at least 50 member libraries in order to keep participation costs to $1600 per library, per year. If we reach the larger goal of 100 member libraries participating, the annual cost will be less than $1,000.00 per library.
More information about the project is available in this overview. More than 60 member librarians have attended informational webinars to learn more about the project.
Several years of exploration, research, listening and learning have gone into this project proposal. Librarians across the country are working on the issue of the retention of and persistent access to print materials in an increasingly digital world. A number of different print archiving projects are currently underway, and they include both centralized and distributed models.
LIPA and NELLCO are thrilled to launch this project and hope it will serve as a model for a collaborative solution to print retention of legal material, allowing libraries to make different decisions about library space at the local level. In this way, libraries can continue to be responsive to the changing needs of their users, secure in the knowledge that primary print materials are within reach and under the stewardship of the collaborative.
Margie
********************************* Margaret K. Maes Executive Director Legal Information Preservation Alliance P. O. Box 5266 Bloomington, IN 47407 Phone: 812-822-2773 mailto:mkmaes@gmail.com